Great Ideas

Want some great garden ideas?

Grab some tips and trends from the professionals who showed gardens in this year’s Hidden Design Festival.

Words and images: Robin Powell

Fill the pool! Garden design by Barbara Landsberg

Frame the view

Take a cruise around Sydney harbour and you see the same multi-million dollar mistake repeated all around the shoreline. People remove the trees, thinking
they are maximising their view. So how fabulous is this! The client wanted the existing angophoras to stay, which was just fine with designer Jenny
Paul of Seed Garden Design. She added clipped balls of westringia contrasted with the fine textured movement of Lomandra ’Tanika’ and purple
fountain grass. Rather than blocking the view, the trees frame and change it so that is constantly shifts with each step you take on the terrace or
in the house. Boats and water and the far horizon slide between the silky sculpted branches of the trees in a much more alluring way than if it was
all in front of you, all the time.

Garden designer, Jenny Paul was delighted with her client's decision to keep the Angophora costata trees in her harbourside garden.

Love the built-ins

In small spaces chairs can cause of forest of legs that visually diminishes the space, and makes getting around your guests with the pitcher of margaritas
an obstacle course. Built-in seating is a clean-lined answer. In an inner city terrace courtyard Richard Rimmell for Quercus built a bench seat into
raised planting beds with maidenhair ferns enjoying the shade underneath.

Built in seating designed by Adam Robinson

In a small northern beaches courtyard designed by Adam Robinson, an L-shaped bench has wooden slats and seat, with cushions chosen to tie in with the colours
of the garden and the interior of the house. The tropical foliage of frangipani, bamboo and Strelitzia nicolae explode overhead.

Floating timber bench designed by Richard Rimmel for Quercus

Fill in the pool

When designer Barbara Landsberg, of Landsberg Garden Design, first took the call about filling in the pool in this eastern suburbs garden, she imagined
a hedged lawn, something quiet and simple so as not to detract from the view. But then she met her 86-year-old client, who is a keen gardener, and
completely changed her plans. Instead, the pool’s original coping and the old diving rock were incorporated into sinuous paths around easy-to-reach
garden beds intensely planted with a range of richly textured plants. The result is ever-changing, drawing its owner out into the garden to happily
explore and nurture its treasures every day.

Eastern suburbs garden by designer Barbara Landsberg

Succulents in the Barbara Landsberg

Trending

The trend this year in pots was roughly textured pale stone. Especially effective were Marcia Hosking’s giant, characterful pots filled with the healthiest
giant peace lily, Spathyphyllum wallisii ‘Sensation’, ever seen. (Find pots like these at Terracotta Trading, Lane Cove.) On the plant side,
we liked the blue iris, Neomarica cerulea, which is a cousin of the very useful Brazilian walking iris. Like it, this beauty handles dry shade,
but does it with glaucus blue foliage and brilliant blue flowers from summer into autumn. Matt Cantwell of Secret Gardens had it matched with felty
silver plectranthus. We also like Matt’s use of the tropical birch, Betula nigra, which has wonderful peach-tinted papery bark and a floating
feeling to the soft foliage. It is a much better choice in warm climates like Sydney, and as far north as tropical Queensland, than the cold-loving
silver birch.

Textured pale stone pots in the Marcia Hosking designed garden

Live out the front

Too often our front gardens are used for show and not for living. Marcia Hosking of Hosking Partnership turned this around for her eastern suburbs clients.
Their backyard is overlooked by towering apartments, but the front offered privacy behind a camellia hedge. Marcia pulled up the boggy and overshaded
lawn and replaced it with paving broken up by rills of native violet, added a screen of sweet-smelling evergreen magnolia and a water-feature between
two lovely weeping grafted mulberries, and atmospheric lighting. The family has been lunching and dining and entertaining out here ever since.

Sections

Stay in touch We'll keep you posted and promise not to bombard you.

Ask us

What is the best time and method to propagate daphne?

Any time from spring to autumn is suitable for taking daphne cuttings. Take a cutting of approximately 10cm length, including a node (a swollen section of stem where leaves, stems, roots originate). Dip this into rooting hormone gel or powder and place into propagation mix deep enough so that it stands by itself. A plastic cover over the pot will help retain humidity. Place in a protected position out of direct sunlight. Keep moist and expect roots in a couple of months.

I planted potatoes in layers of manure and straw in early July and would like to know when they will be ready to harvest.

You should be ready to harvest your first batch in February. Simply use your hands to feel through the light mix you have used and pull up as many potatoes as you need for dinner. You can keep on harvesting as you need the potatoes until you run out, or until the start of next winter.